The Detainee

by Peter Liney

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The following morning I got up before everyone else and again slunk off down to the garden. More people means a need for more food and more work and just at that moment I was happy to be doing it.

  Everything was going fine, I was absorbing my daily quota of daylight, feeling it reinvigorate me and chase away the dark, when around midmorning Delilah sidled in; all languid and slow, like it was a hot day and she was an old cat seeking out some shelter.

  She stood there silently for a while, waiting for me to speak. When I didn’t take the opportunity, she sighed and plopped herself down on one of the water barrels.

  “What’s your problem, Clancy?” she asked.

  “I ain’t got a problem,” I told her.

  “Why aren’t you speaking to Lena?”

  “I’m speaking to her.”

  “Huh. When you have to,” she commented. For a moment she paused and gazed out through the grille at the clouds colliding noiselessly overhead. “It’s funny, you can know someone for years, but until you seen them in love, you don’t know them at all. I would’ve thought you’d handle this better.”

  “Handle what?” I asked, stopping what I was doing and giving her “the look.”

  The way she shrugged made me suspect she probably knew as much about Lena’s past as I did, that among those many conversations the two of them have been having, the subject of Lena’s life in the Camp had inevitably come up. It made me even angrier. I don’t agree with these things getting discussed with everyone. It’s not right.

  “None of us have been angels,” Delilah said, a rusty little chuckle scraping out of her throat. “Certainly not me. Jimmy don’t care. Oh, but that’s me, ain’t it? That don’t matter.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Like hell you don’t.”

  I started to feel all hot at the back of my neck, like I was glowing red. “It’s none of my business what Lena got up to before I met her.”

  “So that is the problem?”

  “No! I told you, there ain’t no problem,” I said, jamming my spade so hard into the ground I had to struggle to pull it out again. “I just thought it was time we both stopped this playacting, that’s all.”

  “What playacting?” she asked.

  “You know.”

  She just stared at me as if she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

  “Like we’re a couple,” I told her. “Partners. We both know that ain’t true.”

  “Aw, Clancy!” she groaned, like she was dealing with a very small child.

  I glared at her again, daring her to say another word, then turned back to what I was doing. “One day, God willing, she’ll find someone her own age. That’s right and proper. That’s the way it should be.”

  Delilah just snorted and shook her head, as if the whole thing was quite pitiful, making me feel even more uncomfortable.

  “We just ain’t suited. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” she replied. “She’s brave and honest and quite special.”

  “And half my age,” I reminded her.

  “Yeah. Like that matters.”

  “’Course it matters!” I snapped.

  For several minutes we simmered away in that ripening silence. I could feel her gaze upon me as surely as if she had me in the sights of a gun, but I wasn’t about to acknowledge it. Finally, with me refusing to say another word, she sighed long and hard and stood up to go.

  Just before she went back up the tunnel, she paused. “You know something, Clancy? You’re disappointing me with this. You really are.”

  Still I ignored her, carrying on with my digging as if I hadn’t heard a word.

  As soon as the shuffle of her footsteps faded, once her candle dimmed into the distance, I tossed my spade down and ambled over to where she’d been sitting on the water barrel, gazing up at the overhead grille and the thin slices of bramble and distant sky.

  I thought Delilah would’ve understood. She’s more my generation. It ain’t so much that I disapproved of what Lena’d done, it’s what she’d said about my standards not applying anymore. As if the main reason I was upset is cuz I was old and past it.

  I mean, I guess we all reach an age when we start to feel that people don’t think like us, that we’re the keepers of dying values, but what makes life really difficult is when you find yourself involved with someone on the other side of that divide.

  Not that I was thinking that clearly. I had all sorts of stuff sparring away in my head. One moment I was going to walk up to Lena and hug her so tightly every bit of the last two days would drain out of her and we’d be back the way we were; the next I got so mad I was convinced she was the most callous and unfeeling woman I’d met in my life. Not that you would’ve known, of course. No matter what I’m thinking, I’m still the Big Guy. And silence is what I do best.

  I guess it made life in the tunnels pretty difficult: twenty-five percent of the population refusing to talk to another twenty-five. Especially for Jimmy and Delilah, who appear to see other people’s arguments as rivals to their own. No doubt that was why, the following day, when I told Jimmy we urgently needed to get out and do some shoring up, he came up with this story about his leg hurting really badly.

  I know it is worse some days than others, but since he’s been down here, it’s almost gone into remission. I haven’t seen him use his stick in ages. But he insisted that he was in a lot of pain, which put me in an awkward position. I mean, Lena’s stronger than him anyway, and since I’d made such a big thing about it needing doing, I didn’t have much choice but to take her with me. Which, I guess, was what Jimmy had been planning all along.

  No wind has ever blown colder through the tunnels than the one that day. We loaded ourselves up with tools and materials and trudged off down to the lower level, not saying a word to each other. The whole morning the only time we spoke was for work reasons: to be passed a tool, or for someone to take the weight of something. I hated it. I really did. But you get so locked into those things sometimes you forget where to find the key.

  Eventually we finished that particular section and moved on to find somewhere else where we might be needed. I mean, we’re just patching things up, trying to arrest the rate of decay, knowing it’s hopeless but kidding ourselves that one day the time we’re buying might prove important.

  We came to a flooded stretch, I don’t know, maybe twenty or thirty yards of it. For a moment I hesitated, but holding my candle up and seeing dry land farther on, I entered the water.

  “Might be deep,” Lena said, her sudden words almost alarming me.

  I just ignored her; wading on, splashing through. I mean, if it followed the line of the tunnel floor, I didn’t see how it could be.

  What I didn’t know, and she unquestionably did, was there was an old inspection pit looming up in front of me. I took about ten paces and my world suddenly changed from air to water. I was so shocked, it took me a moment to realize what had happened. I floundered around in the depths of that rancid pool, my feet repeatedly slipping on the slimy bottom, then finally managed to find some grip and propel myself back to the surface.

  As I broke through I was met by Lena’s shrieking laughter. I never heard her laugh that way before. The candle she was carrying to give me a little light had fallen to the ground in front of her and was spluttering away with her doubled-up shadow rocking back and forth on the wall behind her.

  I grabbed the side of the pit, amused her no end by falling back a couple of times, then managed to haul myself out. I was that furious I could barely get the words out.

  “You knew!” I shouted, but she was laughing so much she couldn’t even reply. “For chrissake! I gotta go change now!”

  “Oh, come on!” she cried, urging me to see the funny side of it.

  “No!”

  I turned to stomp off, so angry, maybe irrationally so. But I didn’t get very far.

  “Clancy!”
she shouted, a more impatient tone coming to her voice.

  I hesitated. “What?”

  There was a very long pause, as if she thought I should be able to guess every bit of the conversation that was about to follow, that it was unnecessary. “I don’t understand this,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Why are you acting this way?”

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say, so just shrugged. A small act of defiance, of estrangement, cuz I knew she couldn’t see it.

  “What right have you got to judge me?” she demanded, repeating the same question as the other day.

  “I’m not judging you.”

  “What, then?”

  I sighed, “I don’t know. I just need to sort a few things out in my head, that’s all.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, walking right up to me, her big, broad face demanding answers.

  I tell you, sometimes she gets so much expression about her. If eyes really are the windows of the soul, then the act of seeing must be a layer of glass, cuz with her, when you look into that face, there’s nothing between you and pure emotion.

  “What were you confused about?” she asked.

  “Nothing . . . It don’t matter.”

  She sighed. Again there was a pause. A whole conversation of silences, one after the other.

  “I don’t understand you,” she said.

  “Different generation,” I shot back immediately.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Everything,” I replied, the word coming out so quickly it was like it was on a spring.

  “Why do you have this thing about age?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Do you know how many times you mention it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s boring.”

  “Oh, pardon me,” I sneered.

  “Do you really think I care? Do you? . . . I’m blind, Clancy! Blind!”

  “Oh, right. So one disability for another?”

  She hit me so hard, I could barely believe it. Once more, I reckon I might’ve even gone down. I also realized that part of me had wanted her to, that I was pushing her in an effort to get this thing out of me.

  “Listen to me, will you!” she shouted. “You stupid old bastard! We are prisoners on this filthy stinking rat-infested pile of crap in the middle of nowhere. Garbage thrown out with garbage. Wastelords feed kids drugs and send them out to murder and the kids don’t know any better than to do it. Disease is everywhere. Blowouts. Flies. This place is hell, Clancy. The human race has never sunk any lower. And you really think that amongst all this, it matters that you’ve been on this Earth longer than I have? . . . Do you?” she screamed.

  I went silent for a moment. She was crying tears of anger, brushing them away as soon as they formed, and I tell you, they were hurting me a damn sight more than that shot to the jaw. I felt embarrassed and stupid, and yet I had something inside me that I just had to get out, and I reckoned this would be my only opportunity.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” I told her.

  “What?”

  “Getting old.” She groaned with frustration, started to protest, but I talked over her. “Day by day watching your body rot. Feeling where it’s starting to go, the wear and tear, the opportunities for pain. I mean, I ain’t nothing. I ain’t ever been nothing. I know that. Just a big lug with muscles. But it got me respect. When I walked into a room people used to stop and look. You think there’s any other reason why someone like me’s going to be respected now? You think they stop and look?” I paused and grunted to myself. “All they see is an old man.”

  “Clancy!”

  “If they see anything at all.”

  She hesitated for a moment, just to make sure there was nothing more, then sighed. “Does it matter?”

  I gazed into her face. I wanted to tell her that it did, that at times it felt like everything, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t even sure I could live with what I just said. But if I was hoping for some kind of reward for my painful honesty, for rolling over and exposing my soft underbelly, I wasn’t about to get it.

  “You know something,” she said, “I don’t think you’re anywhere near as old as you are sorry for yourself.”

  “What!”

  “You’ve given up, Big Guy,” she said, sneering at the nickname.

  “What the hell do you know?” I exploded, my voice echoing all along the tunnel. “You ain’t much more than a kid!”

  “So what?” she asked.

  “It’s important!”

  “Not to me.”

  There was a long pause. I don’t know what I expected, but it hadn’t been this.

  “I know there’s an aging process,” she said. “’Course there is. But you sound like some dumb film star or something. Just because you lived off your physique most of your life, you can’t cope with losing it.”

  I don’t know whether I felt angry, humiliated, or what. I wish to God I hadn’t said anything. She had no right. Not at her age. Though to be fair, she did know how to soften the blow.

  “Now, if that’s really what this is all about, if there’s nothing more, then, please . . . please, will you stop? I don’t give a damn how old you are. Not now or ever. And Clancy,” she said, her voice suddenly softening, “I been missing you so much.”

  I just don’t understand how someone so much younger than me can make me feel like a badly behaved child. Suddenly I was filled with unreserved apologies. I reached out, grabbed her, gave her such a squeeze she cried out in pain, which made me feel even more dumb and useless.

  I know I’m a fool. You don’t have to tell me that. But sometimes it just seems like you gotta prove it to yourself. That you got to keep doing something over and over till it hurts so much you realize you can’t do it anymore. As if pain was only invented to teach us how far we can go in one direction.

  Maybe she’s right. Maybe I do get a bit carried away with this “age thing.” I know I do keep mentioning it all the time. As if I don’t want either of us to ever forget. But I hadn’t realized how much it was irritating her.

  That night, reinstated in her bed, holding her, listening to her gentle breathing, I started turning it over—the time on the clock, the wear on the body and how much influence your mind has on these things anyway. I ran a hand over my body. One clammy mass of flaccid flesh, sagging muscles, and jutting bones. I hate it. I really do. But does that mean I’ve given in? I’m still stronger than most. Stronger than anyone of my age I know, that’s for sure. Maybe she’s got a point? Maybe I have given up too soon? And yet, what else can I do?

  The following morning, almost as soon as I opened my eyes, I got it into my head that I had to go back up top to see what was happening. I mean, we’ve been trying to ignore it, to pretend it’s no longer our concern, but I think we all know that’s not true, that at some point we’re going to have to deal with what’s going on up there. I wanted to know if the Village had been attacked again. If there’d been any more atrocities. And most of all, how great the threat to Lena is. Is De Grew really searching for her? Or has he merely been exorcising some old insecurity?

  I decided not to tell the others. As far as they knew I was off inspecting tunnels for the morning. But when I got up to the main hall I hid my tools, and instead of turning down, turned up; toward the entrance and the light.

  The number of fears that had been burning away in my head, it was reassuring to emerge out into a day where nothing presented an immediate threat; no sense of broken humanity, of shattered time or universal outrage. The gulls were going about their business in their usual manner, screeching and wheeling across a cloudy sky, and as I came into sight of the Village, I was relieved to see no sign of any fires.

  I wasn’t in the least bit surprised to see that people were starting to rebuild. I mean, it may seem courageous, or tenacious, or whatever; that no matter what happens they still pick themselves up and keep going, but when you stop and think about it, wh
at other choice do they have? The only other option would be to simply lie out in the open and wait to die.

  A small group’s decided to break away from the others, a new Village springing up near the top of the Head, but I don’t give a lot for their chances. Like it or not, there is a kind of strength in numbers. It’s best to find yourself a spot as close as you can to the center of everything. That way you’ll know when the kids are coming and from what direction. Also, there’s always the chance that they’ll get bored before they reach you. Up there they’re going to be as vulnerable as hell. Just a light snack before the main meal.

  Don’t ask me why, probably just force of habit, but for some reason I found myself heading over to where my lean-to used to be. It didn’t take long to remember that the destruction of that part of the Village had been so total I couldn’t even be sure where it was.

  In a way I guess that says everything; Villagers can come and go without a trace. Nonpeople, nonexistences, so much dry dust to be blown away.

  I ambled slowly on, past half-constructed dwellings, their owners using more and more imagination to create them. Tepees made out of wire mesh interwoven with garbage; the now-familiar holes in the ground covered with plastic, anything that afforded a little warmth and protection. I nodded at a couple of familiar faces, both of whom ignored me, then, seeing nothing else of note, decided to return to the tunnels with, if not good news, then thankfully not bad.

  Just as I was leaving the Village, I heard a lot of shouting and yelling going on over by the water. This crowd was gathering, mostly old people, but as I got closer, there was a gang of kids on the other side of the inlet as well.

  It didn’t take long to figure out what they were looking at, nor to guess what the situation was. There was an old couple in the sea, about forty or fifty yards out from the shore, sitting atop what I suspect was the remains of their lean-to—half a dozen lengths of burned and battered timber they’d somehow managed to lash together.

  I guess they just couldn’t take it anymore. No matter what, they were going to try to make it to the Mainland. But Lord, I gotta tell you, it was pitiful. There ain’t no way. Day or night, the satellites are gonna get you. And on those odd occasions when they’re not functioning, and presuming you don’t get lost in the fog, there’s a welcome party waiting with orders to shoot on sight. Why that should persuade these two to try at this time of day, I don’t know. For sure they couldn’t have imagined they’d be cheered on by gangs of spectators. The man was frantically paddling with a broken length of plastic padding, while the woman was screaming at everyone to go away, not to draw attention to them. One or two of the old folks did, more out of respect than anything, but the kids thought it was a great joke. They were baying out to the sky for the satellites to take a shot, get a bead on them, blow them out of the water.